Controlling access to computing resources and data is of major importance in today's digital security environment. Without sufficient security measures to restrict access to authorized entities, sensitive data and resources can be compromised beyond recovery. Thus, a recognized need exists for strong authentication mechanisms to control access to vulnerable computing domains. However, implementation of many currently available strong authentication mechanisms requires expensive and complex security system deployments, thus deterring implementation by many entities that could benefit from stronger authentication.
For example, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) represents a set of standards for creating, storing, and managing asymmetric keys that can be used for authentication. Though PKI provides strong authentication, security consumer adoption of PKI has been limited due to the significant expense and complexity of PKI deployment. Therefore, security consumers have been traditionally required to choose between weak single factor authentication, e.g., username/password only, or stronger authentication, e.g., PKI, involving complex and expensive deployments. Consequently, a need exists for an authentication mechanism that is stronger than single factor and does not require the complex and expensive deployment of PKI.